FEDERMAN'S BLOG [the laugh that laughs at the laugh...]

Laugh: yes because when some guy weeps somewhere in the world there is always some other guy who laughs somewhere else: happy balance! Never fails its normal equilibrium: laugh or cry it all comes out the same in the end!

June 24, 2006

MARIANNE HAUSER

marianne hauser changed tense yesterday - have you read The Talking Room - if not order it immediately --

it came out from FC at the same time as TIOLI and Marianne and I became friends immediately -- she was a fabulous writer -- she was 93 yesterday when she changed tense [and still smoking pot which we did together regularly once upon a time -- she had an antique silver cigarette box full of joints and she would offer them to her friends or even to strangers -- she was quite a woman -she was from Alsace had traveled all over the world -- she had married some mediocre orchestra conductor who conducted the kirkville municipal orchestra in nebraska -- she dumped him -- but not her son michael whom she loved and still loves -- and became an outrageous lesbian -- at 80 she was more gorgeous and seductive than those young broads [excuse the term] who walk around with their jeans exposing the crack of their asses and their boobs falling out of their blouses --

I swear the world is full of such exposed young ladies -- and too many of them are fat around the hips

but marianne hauser she was something else

when she published that marvelous little book called ME & MY MOM I wrote her to tell her that Erica and I had just gone through that with Trude [E's mother] -- if you have not read ME & MY MOM -- drop everything -- it's explained to you your relationship with mother or your mother in-law --

I am sad that marianne is gone and at the same time happy to think that she hung in there and still wrote a couple more fabulous books before she decided that she was fed up with this fucking world of ours --- if you want to read about the demolition of the father read SHOOTOUT WITH FATHER by Marianne Hauser -- it's as great as the letter Kafka wrote to his father --

she was complaining one day to me after ME & MY MOM came out that no one paid attention to her work -- maybe we were complaining because my work was also being ignored --

and so I wrote a little piece for Marianne

you may have seen it before - but here it is again

ETERNAL RETURN

For Marianne Hauser

As we old bums [you &amp;amp;amp; me & your mom & the other bum in peeoria] contemplate what appears to others to be vieillesse ou vieilles fesses as we admire [with a touch of disdain] our own amazing present mental agility [and virility too] as we delight in the fact that we are becoming so good [so dexterous] so much better with words as we get older [perhaps even wiser in spite of the cliche] as we listen [especially at night] to those protracted echoes of the void [excuse the terminal lyricism] but without asking [as in days of youth] whence the original sound [I almost said original sin] came [sometimes unwanted] as we contemplate the landscape of words we designed and left behind us [not without pain] yes as we contemplate the not too distant moment when we will have to change tense [inevitably so] we wonder [often aloud] how the hell have we managed to come this far [to do that much] with words [words words our whole life was but a pell mell babel of words] and look oh look how they fall in place now so easily so quietly our words as they say [or fail to say] what they want to say before crumbling into the great void [excuse the romantic agony] alright crumbling into the motherfucking abyss of forgetfulnessRaymond Federman

2002 THE TWILIGHT OF THE BUMS (Microfiction, with George Chambers). Altx Press [Boulder, Colorado] Also available as an E- book from Altx.com. German translation (Suhrkamp Verlag), 1998, under the title Penner-Rap. Radio play adaptation under the title The Dialogues of the Bums, Bayerischer Rundfunk, 1997.

2001 LOOSE SHOES: A life Story of Sorts (Fiction in English & French). Weidler Buchverlag (Berlin). German translation under the title Offene Schuhe [same publisher]. Loose Shoes -- Musical composition by Michael Riessler performed in Munich, Ulm, Frankfurt, Cologne, May 2000.

1999 THE PRECIPICE AND OTHER CATASTROPHES (Collected Plays, bilingual edition, English/German). Poetry Salzburg (Austria). Radio play adaptation by Deutschland Radio (Berlin) 1998.

1998 FEDERMAN : FROM A to X-X-X-X [A Recyclopedic Narrative, Edited by Larry McCaffery, Douglas Rice, Thomas Hartl, in collaboration with the author]. San Diego State University Press. Limited edition.

1996 THE LINE (Fiction, chapbook, special limited edition). The Club of Odd Volumes (Amherst, New York). Limited edition. Translated into French.

It was his generosity which initially impressed me, the continuity and inclusion in his storytelling. In fact, being in the same room with Federman is a lot like reading one of his books--sprinkled with double-dashes, at times conspicuously free of punctuation. At other times, he rewrites the story while you watch, and in his transparency, in his willingness to show you the form, you forget there is a writer at all...

CLICK HERE TO READ THE INNER-VIEW IN THE FALL 2006 ONLINE EDITION OF RAIN TAXI...

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